Flare

Balance

Balance, the RPG task that never ends! But has to start somewhere.

If you’ve played Flare enough times, you know that melee builds are far too weak right now. Over the last few days I’ve been trying to fix this with Powers, but now I realize it’s the wrong way to go.

A new revelation: characters should be fun to play and manageable even if you take away the fancy powers. A player should be able to just basic melee attack or basic ranged attack to victory. A Physical build should feel physical/brutish instead of dying in only a few attacks. Even the Magical build has a mana-free missile right now just to make its core gameplay doable.

So this weekend I’m going to be pondering the core game stats, and ways to keep something of a balance.

Various Fixes

• Fixed frames-per-second throttling, should now correctly run at a max ~30fps.
• As a result of the above, many animation speeds had to be changed. I’ll tweak more of this later.
• As a result of the above, the game should feel faster on old machines.
• Can no longer interact with NPCs if the hero is dead
• Enemies abandon combat when the hero is dead

That’s enough damage for one day. I will be out of town this weekend, and probably without a constant internet connection.

NPCs with Dialog

morris989 sent in a Flare patch to add talking NPCs. It’s a simple implementation, but it adds the needed hooks to expand into more interesting conversation options later. Check out r280!

GameSwitcher added

A new class named GameSwitcher has been inserted. It is in the main.cpp. GameEngine is removed from main.cpp and is not a child of GameSwitcher. The new class handles the main game modes (anything that takes up the entire screen and controls). Basically it just calls the logic() and render() for the current game mode, and will perform various checks to transition to new game states. This is the place where the Title Menu, New Game (character create) Menu, and Load Game Menu will exist.

This is how I want the menus to interact:

Executable launched -> Main Menu

Main Menu -> New Game
          -> Load Game
          -> Exit Game (executable ends)

New Game -> Game Play
         -> Main Menu (on cancel)

Load Game -> Game Play
          -> Main Menu (on cancel)

Game Play -> Main Menu (Save and Exit To Title)

Flare v0.12 “Vendors” Released

It’s only been a couple weeks but v0.12 is ready! Here’s a quick list of changes since v0.12

• Vendors have been added. Buy and sell items! There is one vendor at the spawn point and another vendor in the cave.
• Voice-acting for the vendor by Brandon Morris (Augmentality)
• Male vendor 3D model by TiZiana
• Potions can be placed on the Action Bar. The number of remaining potions is shown. When you run out of that potion, the icon goes dark. Thanks to help from LongerDev.
• Support for other powers on items has been added. This opens up the possibility for interesting items in the future (e.g. teleport boots).
• Action is no longer paused when menus are open. This behavior can be changed in Settings.h. Contributed by LongerDev
• Basic support for Mouse Movement added. Edit your save file and you’ll see a mouse_move option. Contributed by Cheshire.
• Mouse-over on creatures shows a menu with the monster’s name, level, and health. Contributed by Cheshire.
• Added a basic cmake file to the source distributable. Also rearranged the folder structure to make things easier for novice users. Thanks to gnurobert and ceninan for help on this!
• Dying now has a penalty: 50% gold loss
• Crits are more powerful and always do more damage than a regular attack.
• Click here for a full list of credits.

Screenshots

Download v0.12

• Windows
• OSX
• Source

Community Announcements

• Boomz.me
• FreeGameDev
• Reddit IndieGaming




• Reddit freegames

v0.12 Release Candidate

I’ve packaged (win, osx, src) what might be version 0.12. Will do an official release tomorrow. If you’d like to test before then, drop me a note or try building from svn.

Restructuring for easier Make

I’m slightly restructuring the files/folders of Flare so that the checkout and source-packages more resemble the final structure needed to build and play the game. The “resources” folder no longer exists and all its subfolders are now moved up one level.

Vendor Ready For Testing

I’ve finished the basic Vendor system. There is now a vendor standing near the spawn/starting point in Goblin Warrens. He sells potions and level 2-4 normal quality items. He also has a random stock of items based on his level (same calculations as game loot).

Death Penalty

To make Gold more interesting I’ve added a death penalty — 50% gold loss upon death.

Flare Promotion

I’ve gotten this question more than any other in the past two weeks: “Why aren’t you promoting Flare more?”

Short answer: it’s coming. Sometime this summer I plan to do wider promotion of Flare.

Some people are confused: why would any project want to wait to get more attention? Well, even the tiny trickle of Flare feedback I’m getting these days is taking up a significant portion of my time. Not that I mind — the feedback I’m getting is often earnest and helpful, and the volume is such that I can respond to pretty much everyone.

I’m not a “sales” guy — I’m terrible at promotion because most of the time it just isn’t genuine. Perhaps you can help me. I’d much rather see Flare grow organically. I feel bad signing up for a new forum to talk about Flare, but I’m comfortable talking about it to the communities I already know. Maybe you are part of communities that would enjoy this game: if so, share a link.

I’m not here to make a dime. I will probably never try to make a dime from this. I just want to make nice things; maybe someone else will enjoy them if I’m fortunate. Hopefully I’ll find more people who love the genre enough to craft worlds with me.

Item Powers on the Action Bar

Items with Powers can now be used through the action bar. Details from r260:

• Potions can now be put on the action bar.
• The number of remaining potions is shown on the action bar.
• If you have no remaining potions of that type, the potion icon is darkened/disabled in the Action Bar.
• ItemDatabase no longer has an activate(). It is now handled by PowerManager.
• Powers can be attached to items. This is how potions are done as well.
• You can put permanent powers on non-consumable equipment.
• These items can be dragged onto the Action Bar to Use their Power.
• Added a Lightning Rod (item 1021) to show a spellpower on a weapon.
• Added Teleport to the Boots of Testing (item 1022) to show another item power example.
• If you remove or unequip a power item, that power is darkened/disabled in the Action Bar.
• Increased the number of total allowed powers from 128 to 1024

Special thanks to LongerDev who helped me immensely in figuring out the best way to tackle action bar items!

Pausing

Having a menu open no longer pauses gameplay. This option is set in Settings.h.

Vendors

I’m starting to build the Vendors menu. For now, for easy testing, I made a hard-coded vendor menu open when you press V (for Vendor). Ctrl+Click an item to buy it. I will add drag/drop buying and selling soon.

Flare Art

Here’s a list of art I’d like to see in Flare soon.

Grassland Tileset

A good grassland tileset will, of course, have excellent grass — this is way harder than it looks. Have a look at my first attempt at grass and water tiles. It’s not bad, but it’s too noisy when tiled on an entire screen. It needs to be muted to fit as a non-distracting background. Also, that translucent grass sticking above the tile doesn’t work well when removing the alpha layer. The final grassland tileset should avoid these issues.

The grassland tileset should contain grass-water transitions and grass-cliff transitions. It should probably also contain dirt roads, wood or stone fences to border the roads, wood road signs, and wood footbridges. The set could have various shrubs, weeds, lone trees, odd rock structures. Maybe some forgotten and unexplained monuments — a carved statue, a circle of stones, abandoned campsites, and more. It might need a few special “exit” tiles — a cave opening that leads to a Cave Tileset level, a thicket of trees that leads to a Forest Tileset level, etc. Perhaps this Broken Tower could be used as a Dungeon entrance.

Forest Tileset

The forest tileset might be the most challenging to get correct. I want a thick, mystical forest. The player should get the sense that he is traveling in the shaded underbrush. Thick trees and brambles form “walls”. The walls can’t be made by just combining lots of trees. Trees can’t also be too tall and obstruct view. Diablo 2 Act 3 did something sorta like this, but I want to go for a more “deep in the woods” feel (rather than simply traveling along the river or treeline). I’ll probably need the help of a great concept artist to get this tileset going.

I might want this tileset to be more fantasy-oriented than the others so far. There should be huge gnarled roots, weird glowing plant/fungal life. It should feel like a fey place of elves, fairies, dryads, centaurs, etc.

This Temple Entrance could have a place in this tileset.

Village Tileset

I made this Medieval Building Tileset. I’ll probably re-render them for Flare using different lights. Some of the Grassland tileset can probably be reused here (e.g. grass and dirt paths). There can be a few unique buildings added. Maybe a series of shop signs. Because of the way the engine works (small maps connected by teleport/transition points), the village should probably be surrounded by a wall, fence, natural cliffs, or something of that nature.

Lots of small bits to bring a village to life will be needed here. I think it’s best if the village is designed by a concept artist first. That way the village looks less like a random assembly of tiles and more like a planned, living town.

And more…

Those tilesets — dungeon, cave, grasslands, forest, village — would be a solid start to building a world. I already have music ready for those. Many more tilesets can be added in the future. Here’s some ideas:

• Natural outdoor tilesets
  • Desert
  • Mountain
  • Swamp
  • Jungle
  • Pine Forest
  • Tundra
  • Beach
• Fantasy outdoor tilesets
  • Crumbling Bridge Highways
  • Ziggurat
  • Good-guys Castle
  • Bad-guys Fortress
  • Magical Destruction/Fallout
• Fantasy indoor tilesets
  • Inn, Shop, Home, Tavern
  • Temple
  • Elemental Cavern
  • Evil Fortress
  • Crypts
  • Wizard School/Tower

Of course, most everything in that list is a fantasy trope. Reminder: I’m mainly building an engine at this point. I’m much more curious to see unique, imaginative tilesets.

Enemies

Current Flare has zombies, skeletons, antlions, goblins, and minotaurs. Here are my other must-have creatures, which have been in the Bestiary list since before Flare v0.01 was released.

Dragonman

Maybe I liked Dragonlance too much growing up, but I want heavily-armored draconic humanoids in my game. Originally these were going to be the main foes of my game, but I’ve kinda backed off that concept. In fact, it may be more appropriate to drop Dragonmen and use the concept to make a faction of heavily-armored humans instead. So the inspiration here is: Dragonlance’s Draconians, Borderlands’ Crimson Lance, Fallout’s Brotherhood of Steel, etc.

Elemental

I want Archon-style elemental creatures in the game. Fire and Ice variants at least. If I end up going the Western Element route, add Earth and Wind options. If I go the Eastern Element route, add Earth/Metal/Wood. Most likely I’ll just start with Fire and Ice though. These creatures might make heavy use of particle effects, so they might require full alpha layer art.

Wyvern

Wyverns can double as bat-like creatures or as dragon whelps with only a few minor changes. I like this Wyvern concept by Benalene. The wyverns would be pretty small in-game. They would be the first flying creatures in game, ignoring any low-obstacles during movement.

OGA Asset Creatures

There are a handful of creatures that can be made using mostly OGA assets. There probably are many more; this is just a quick perusal.

• Ghouls — crawly undead that stun on attack (classic old-school ghoul paralysis). These should be feared because they can lock-down a hero. This ghoul model by Riidom is perfection.
• Giant Spiders — a fantasy trope, but throw in a ranged web immobilize attack and some poison and you have a great monster. Sunburn has a great spider sculpt that can be polished for Flare.
• Death Knights — this character by Santiago Calleriza is begging to be made 3D. When I have a free weekend I’ll probably do it myself. Would make a great boss character.
• Lizardman — this humanoid reptile could use some tribal dress, and would make a great humanoid enemy race. There’s also this lizardman, and both could be used for variety.
• Executioner — this executioner would make a solid boss, or even an elite minion of a later boss.
• Scorpion — this scorpion would make a great desert beast
• Antlion Demon — this antlion demon would make a unique boss.
• I don’t know what this is but I like it
• Insect Humanoid — love this model
• Vampire — this model would be perfect
• Vampiress — and this one. This pair could also make interesting townsfolk.